Green Room

Re: Pennsylvania in play

I’ll have more on the PA poll in a few minutes, AP, but meanwhile here’s Paul Krugman trying to convince readers that all is well and Bill’s doing four events in the safe state of Pennsylvania just to get out of the house for a bit:

Worse yet, some reporting tells readers things the reporters have to know aren’t true. How many stories have you seen declaring that “both sides think they’re winning”? No, they don’t: the Romney campaign is visibly flailing, trying desperately to find new fronts on which to attack Obama. They clearly know that it will take a miracle — sorry, a last-minute surge — to prevail on Tuesday. It’s OK, I guess, to report campaign spin; but surely it’s not OK to report campaign spin as the truth, which is what these stories are doing.

Via the estimable Chuck Blahous of E21, who writes: “He knows he’s handing a weapon to everyone to use against him forever if the results utterly refute him on Tuesday. He’s basically thrown down the gauntlet on whether he lives in an alternative reality.”

“He knows he’s handing a weapon to everyone to use against him forever if the results utterly refute him on Tuesday. He’s basically thrown down the gauntlet on whether he lives in an alternative reality.”

Krugman is mentally unstable. Mentally unstable people don’t give much thought to their reputations. Besides, his reputation is already two steps below a septic tank.

I’m sorry to be off topic here, but I just wanted to say that I really love the new green room format. I feel like we’re getting more content and opportunities to comment. It is neat seeing the main bloggers interact with each other more.

That’s the thing about Lefties, it doesn’t make any difference if it’s true, just like Obama’s promises, everything has an expiration date. They are never held accountable, they are never responsible, that is the centerpiece of their whole ideology.

The Obama campaign and their supporters really believe that they are going to win Ohio and the election… They are delusional because they are not going to win Ohio and they are not going to win the election… These idiots believe their own lies…

Somewhat off topic, but the fact that Rassmusen has moved 2 points in Obama’s direction in the last 2 days has me nearly in a panic.

Someone please talk me off of the ledge?!?

h a p f a t on November 4, 2012 at 10:51 AM

Rasmussen is fudging the numbers to show at tie at 49% and plays it safe. I have always thought that he was going to do this. However the internals show that Romney leads independents by 10 points in Rasmussen poll today… Also Rasmussen is showing that Romney is only getting 87% of the Republican base which is a joke…

“He knows he’s handing a weapon to everyone to use against him forever if the results utterly refute him on Tuesday. He’s basically thrown down the gauntlet on whether he lives in an alternative reality.”

Somewhat off topic, but the fact that Rassmusen has moved 2 points in Obama’s direction in the last 2 days has me nearly in a panic.

Someone please talk me off of the ledge?!?

h a p f a t on November 4, 2012 at 10:51 AM

He keeps changing his partisan model — is at D+4 right now. Was D+2 before and R+2 before that. Looks like Ras feels more comfortable with a tie — makes him look like a “good” pollster. Today’s poll shows Romney surging with indies, to +9. In a tie, Zero needs to get 50% or better of indies. Not going to happen. Not even close. Chillax.

There is a very simple, straightforward way to judge if a state is in play: look at the RealClear Politics electoral map.

It has shown a very large number of states as “toss up” for the past few weeks. The current map has been unchanged for about ten days. This is a bit disturbing until you realize that the map is based on cooked polls, and the cooking is done to favor the Democrats.

We have Obama as ~80% likely to win Electoral College if popular vote is a tie. 98% if it’s O+1. 30% if it’s R+1.

So if the national vote is just Romney +1 (likely), Obama’s chances drop to, er, 30%….LOL

Norwegian on November 4, 2012 at 10:58 AM

Oh my goodness. Well at the least that’s more realistic.

Who died and made this Nate Silver person king? I never read the New York Times, and I had never heard of this Nate Silver guy. Is he pretending to be nonpartisan?

bluegill on November 4, 2012 at 11:17 AM

He’s a stridently liberal Obama loving statistician who made a probability model based on state polls for elections that called 49 of 50 states right in 2008 (or of those not obvious states, he called 4 of 5 right). He was given a poll watching job at the NYT and even though he didn’t do well in 2010 he’s become a prophet to the left. All election he’s been insisting the state polls are perfect and Obama has between a 65 and 85% chance of winning at any given time and thus giving liberals comfort since they take what he says as Revealed Truth. Now’s he’s backtracking from that.

He was burned by being the most optimistic pollster for the Republicans in 2010. Nate Silver really rubbed his nose in it even though Silver did just as poorly. I think there is a good argument Ras was right about 2010, but the inept Michael Steele and a Republican party in a rebuilding phase caused many elections that should have been won to be narrowly lost.

Ras can’t afford to be the only major pollster with Romney up in several toss up states if he turns out to lose. I think though that’s why he has many of them tied, he was right either way.

This all depends on the turnout. If you spend any time at Media Matters, they are convinced the turnout will be huge for democrats. D+infinity. So they think this whole thing is over, and Obama wins in a landslide. At least as much as in 2008. Maybe more. Maybe Obama wins every state but Texas – and they’re not willing to write off Texas just yet.

Then you have the GOP friendly sites, who think that all these former blue states are in play.

So, it all depends on who votes. It needs to be R+ a nice number and it won’t be close.

I went to Kos. Every one of their articles is why it makes sense to vote for Obama and to vote against Romney. Making the case this late in the game, is uh… well too late. I’ve read the comments and there are many, but it’s all oh so very quiet. No enthusiasm. It’s NOTHING like it was in 2008. They know. They’re freaking over what could happen to the Supreme Court. That’s their motivation. I didn’t see anything real aside from pure hatred of Republicans.

Nate Silver @fivethirtyeight
We have Obama as ~80% likely to win Electoral College if popular vote is a tie. 98% if it’s O+1. 30% if it’s R+1.

Who died and made this Nate Silver person king? I never read the New York Times, and I had never heard of this Nate Silver guy. Is he pretending to be nonpartisan?

bluegill on November 4, 2012 at 11:17 AM

The king is dead. Long live the king. Silver might as well no bother backtracking at this point. All that will do is annoy the lefties that listen to him for their fairy tales, while any chance of regaining credibility to the rest of us is beyond lost.

If Democrats aren’t willing to even admit they’ve lost ground in states that President Obama won convincingly in 2008 then it’s clear they’re unable to be objective about this (as if it weren’t clear before).

It’s like Bill Maher, the man has invested so much money and personal capital into President Obama that it would take a bigger man than him to be able to admit when he’s wrong. His deliberate misquoting of President Obama’s Rose Garden Speech to try and prove that it was his conservative guests that were being dishonest was especially disturbing. It would take someone who doesn’t value their ego to be able to step away from the situation and admit that they were wrong.

For instance, if the result after four years of Romney as President is higher unemployment, lower wages, higher gas prices, international turmoil and America falling further down the ranks on Education and Economy then…yeah, I guess we all made the wrong decision and should have voted for Gary Johnson after all.